A group I belong to was discussing the cons of Aspartame this week. One of the members, then replied to a message that said they had checked Snopes to see if there was any validity to the discussion.
After realizing so many people rely on Snopes for their fact checking, and wondering where does Snopes get their information, I did some fact checking of my own. It turns out that Snopes is just a husband and wife team named Barbara and David Mikkelson. Barbara does most of the fact checking herself, but does not list her sources. In other words, the place that most Internet users rely on to check their facts is not as reliable as most of us thought And, sadly, really subject to the biases of only two people. Think about that, they have the power to sway the thinking of a very large number of people on some very important stuff, including health and political issues.
I think Snopes may be a good starting point, but I think i you are looking for information you should dig a little deeper. I know the topic of Aspartame i no closed in my group, but I suggest that anyone interested in the subject go to Google and type "Aspartame dangers" or something similar and read more than one source, then make up your own mind.
I must say, I'm really alarmed by how quickly our society accepts whatever they hear. I'm even more alarmed by how much we hear these days that is either flat out untrue or, at least, skewed to fit someone's agenda. I believe this is partly why our country is in the mess it's in right now. It's unfortunate, but we just can't trust anyone anymore, including our oldest and once most trusted news sources.
